You are too great a philosopher, my loved, my honoured, much-respected North! to be surprised at any thing; you will, therefore, perhaps retain your accustomed equanimity when you see a communication from me, written with those hieroglyphic capitals to each line, and mysterious strokes of admiration at the end of them, which are generally supposed to constitute poetry. But I declare to you, I would have written in my ordinary sprawling hand if I possibly could. I have tried, I assure you, to retain the steadiness and sobriety of my usual demeanour; but all in vain. Living in my present situation, it is impossible to think in prose. Hills and valleys! seas and cliffs!-you would awake the Nine Muses in the soul of an attorney. No wonder, then, you have put a person who does not enjoy the advantage of belonging to the profession into a state of perturbation difficult to be described. The attack first came on me about eighteen months ago, accompanied with

a

strange singing in the head, which generally took the tune of one of Campbell's ballads. Late on Saturday nights, and early on Sunday mornings, I was haunted with the "Mariners of England" and the "Battle of the Baltic;" but all this time I con.. tinued unconscious of my very alarming state. My wife-you remember her as Betsy Gallagher of Portnamuck -to be sure, occasionally looked at me with a very dubious expression when I had given utterance to any of the more vivid of my exclamations, and occasionally shook her head. At last, under pretence of my having a slight cold, a physician was sent for. He prescribed a diligent perusal of Acts of Parliament, the London Directory, and some treatises in blank verse on the Judgment of the Flood and the medicinal skill of the Antediluvians. From these latter I derived considerable benefit; but the Acts of Parliament, and even a special Highway Act, which I read carefully at bedtime, were of no avail. Every body was nonplussed to find out the cause of my complaint; and to this

a second

hour it remains a mystery to every one but myself and you. I found it out by mere accident. Having sat down one day to finish the second part of my "Theory on the innate forces of the mathematical zero," of which you kindly expressed so favourable an opinion, I found, involuntarily as it were, a secret power conducting my pen in the most extraordinary manner imaginable. First a huge capital, then a long line, ending in a powerful word of one syllable, supported by a note of interrogation. Then rogation. line, of exactly the same length, ending in a very similar word to the former, and supported by a long mark of admiration, which I concluded was the answer to the interrogatory of the first. I looked at the two lines, folded up the paper as rapidly as possible, and felt an internal conviction that I was -a poet! How very strange this was! I told nobody of my discovery; but for a long time amused myself in secret by watching the very curious proceedings of my pen. There it was - hard at work-Sapphics and Adonians-Heroics and Alexandrines-let the subject be what it would; and every now and then appeared such words as "tremendous ocean stream!" -" billowy waste!" till at last, by dint of much meditation, I concluded that I was inspired by some Nereid, and that my Hippocrene was salt water.

The only reason I can assign for all this, is the locale of my dwellinghouse. When I used to be a steady sensible contributor, Mr North-alas! that such days are departed-you remember I lived nearly in the heart of England. When the wind blew, it only drove the smoke down my chimney, or endangered the equilibrium of a haystack-when the weather was calm, the fields looked very well, and the ditches gradually became dry. In some evil hour I determined to settle by the sea-side, and a pretty settling it has been. I got possession of what is called a marine villa, and there can be no manner of doubt that it is as marine as it is possible for any terrestrial object to be. It is a small cottage, nearly on the ledge of a sloping piece of ground, at the foot of which is the sea. Fish are at all times disporting themselves within two hundred feet of my diningroom; so that, when by any accident they find themselves on my table, the change of circumstances must be so slight as to be comparatively unobserved. Very different from the sensations of a turbot, that finds itself boiled all to rags in the heart of Warwickshire. This must indeed be very disagreeable to an animal so little accustomed to travelling by land; and I wonder there is no Humane Society to confine the eating of fish to places within a very limited distance of their usual dwelling-place. But this is a remark which you had better enclose - in a parenthesis. I was describing my cottage, which belongs to no order of architecture, and has despised the models of the temples of Greece, and the public buildings of Rome. With the exception of its never going afloat, it might very well pass for a ship. In high winds, the noises of its outside shutters and somewhat ancient doors, with the sound of the sea so close, remind one so much of a Leith smack off Scarborough, that I can confidently recommend it as possessing all the advantages of a sea voyage without any of its dangers. It was here my malady began; but perhaps the cir cumstance that brought it fully to a head, was the purchase of a sailing boat. I gave an order to a man at St Helen's, who builds most of the fishermen's boats on this shore, to send me a specimen of his greatest skill-handsome to look at, and which could not possibly be upset. In about three weeks he achieved a miracle of art; and to the foot of the above-mentioned sloping piece of ground came one evening a boat of enormous strength, very wide, and with bows that would do for a South Sea whaler, yet altogether as prettily shaped a little vessel as I ever saw. With the help of a stout capstan, two men hove her up, and in about a week she was fully rigged, and fit for any thing. It was now altogether impossible to pretend to have a grain of steadiness any longer. The cliffs here are about three hundred feet high, running out, and in all manner of shapes, so as to form numberless little bays, guarded each by its own headlands east and west. How could any one have con

tinued prosaic, floating under those majestic promontories or winding round those beautiful indentations? I took a Whig barrister out with me only once, and he sent me a sonnet next morning. I tried the same process on various others-on an architect, a special pleader, a clergyman, a soldier, they all sent me poetical effusions of extraordinary beauty. If you will send me from Edinburgh a W.S. under fifty, or an advocate in the fullest practice, I will let you know the result of the experiment. The only one it has hitherto failed with is a banker; but it was in the very middle of the monetary crisis, and cannot, therefore, be considered a fair trial.

But there are grander and more stirring sights than bays and headlands. Sometimes the whole sea seems covered with sails. I have counted a hundred and eighty vessels in sight at one time. Whenever "the British fleet up Channel steers," it must always come within range of a very moderately good pair of eyes, and with a telescope you can see the whole equipage, from the admiral to the smallest of the mids. While it is sweeping past, like a great peristrephic panorama, no human being can expect one to retain his phlegmatic equanimity, or write the second part of a treatise "on the innate forces of the mathematical zero;" and therefore you will be at no loss to account for the delay of the concluding chapters. I will finish it the first time I go twenty miles inland honour bright!-or, if I stay here, would you have any objection to take it in rhyme?

Occasionally an event occurs which gives rise to still more interest and excitement. Some time or other, it is supposed in the great storms of November '38, or January '39, a vessel loaded with timber must have gone down, probably in the night, about a mile to the westward; for every now and then, when a stiff breeze has been blowing for a day or two, a large balk of oak or mahogany is seen floating with the tide. Not a moment is lost by the fortunate discoverer; a boat is instantly launched, and if he succeeds in capturing the waif, his fortune is made. A good log of mahogany is worth sixty or seventy pounds. Pieces of wreck are often seen, but generally in such rough weather that a boat cannot be pushed through the surf;

and once, last April, the crowning event of all was the stranding of a great West India ship of five or six hundred tons. But as this is the subject of Trip the Fourth, I will say no more about it, except to tell you how the people who went on board and helped to get her off were rewarded for their activity.

How delightful it used to be to have one's patriotic feelings roused to the highest pitch, by hearing William Farren or old Bartley, dressed in the plain grey coat, brown breeches, and long gaiters, which the stage has long consecrated to the commercial papas of lively young heiresses-how delightful it was, I repeat, to hear those excellent performers launch out in praise of the generosity and other vir

tues of the British merchant! "Such may be the case with high-born seig. neurs and titled comtes, but let me tell you, sir, a British merchant is a man who" the triumphant shouts of the shilling gallery drowned the remainder of the sentence. "A British merchant, sir? - as long as you have such princely benefactors you need have no regret for the want of titled patrons. Who are so free-so liberal-so just?" While Mr Bartley enunciated these profound observa tions, and stuffed his hands into the sober-coloured unmentionables, above described as the characteristic apparel of the histrionic trader, the sympathies of the whole audience were excited, and boxes, pit, and gallery went away, thoroughly impressed with the belief that the most beneficent and disinterested class of her Majesty's subjects are those whose daily and hourly occupation it is to turn an honest penny if they can, but at all events a penny. The farces I have quoted were probably written by merchants' clerks, or perhaps the heads of firms themselves, while enjoying a temporary retirement in what some Italian fiddler used to amuse the Prince of Wales by calling his father's big house; but whether clerk or principal, their de clarations must be taken cum grano.

But, with my former vivid impressions of all the virtues being embodied in the occupant of a three-legged stool of great height, in some city lane, I made no question of the poor fellows who went on board the stranded ship within half an hour of her having struck, and worked all night on board,

being amply rewarded. They found the captain without any idea of where he was; and his spirits were probably not much exhilarated when they told him his bowsprit was within two cables' length of Dunnose. However, with their help, he strove to work the vessel off; and, being in hopes of effecting his purpose, and proceeding on his voyage without having his misfortune discovered, he refused to tell his name or the name of his vessel. His passengers were much alarmed, and hired one of the men to go and procure boats to be near the ship in case the weather changed. He performed this service; and the boats he procured were paid by the passengers the sum agreed upon. The six or seven men who remained on board

all of them seafaring men for the people along this coast, though calling themselves masons, and carpenters, and other terrestrial occupations, are all more or less bred to the sea-were rewarded next morning with the splendid donation of a glass of rum a-piece, which, as rum is cheap, and this was not of the best quality, might amount to the value of three-halfpence a glass; making in all, among the six men, the gross aggregate of ninepence. On the same evening, a steamboat from Portsmouth succeeded in getting her off, and there seemed no great chance of hearing any more of the fortunate vessel or her very liberal commander. A reverend gentleman, who resides near this, wrote a plain statement of these facts to the county paper; and, being furnished anonymously with the names of the owners, he of course expected from the British merchants, whom Mr Bartley had represented as so liberal and just, some compensation for the men who had been so active on their behalf. In answer, he tells me he received a copy of an epistle sent to them by the commander of their vessel, denying that the shore-people had ever been on board; and stating that, with the solitary exception of the ship having been for a short time on shore, there was not the slightest ground for any of the other statements in the reverend divine's communications. There were

witnesses without number to the facts; I saw the men with these bodily eyes - I was on the shore within forty minutes of her taking the ground; and the men themselves were ready to verify all their statements upon oath. The commander published this counter-statement, wherein, among other things, he denies having con.. cealed his name or the name of the vessel, and calls such an accusation absurd, because the name was written in large letters on the ship's sternforgetting, the worthy man, that a darkness which hindered him from seeing the promontory of Dunnose, nearly eight hundred feet high, might excuse the men if they could not make out the ship's title, though writ ten in letters one or even two feet long. My reverend friend prepared an answer to this unaccountable mistatement, and forwarded it for insertion in the next week's paper; but received in reply a private communication from the editor a man of very considerable abilities and excellent character-suggesting that the more likely way of attaining his object, namely, some remuneration for the men, would be, not to continue the controversy, especially as the agent for the vessel had promised to see the matter satisfactorily arranged. From that hour to this the pockets of the above-named agent have been herme tically sealed; the commander goes on his way rejoicing; and the British merchants, in spite of the asseverations of Mr Bartley and others, content themselves with the outlay of the already mentioned ninepence, in the shape of six glasses of rum. Now this is pessimi exempli, and the fruits of this niggardliness were very soon after shown. One night, about six weeks afterwards, a great fire was perceived at sea. It was impossible it could be any thing else but a burning ship. The flame went on for hours flaring up against the sky, but not a soul would stir from shore to the rescue;-alleging, as with one voice, that they had had enough to do with the other, and would never trouble themselves either with stranded vessels or burning ones. It turned out to be a steam-boat bound for Spain, which sank after burning to the water's edge. The crew, however, were saved.

You're very fond of mackerel; I recollect seeing you stow away sixteen soused in vinegar for luncheon, in less than twenty minutes. Early in the spring the mackerel season begins; that is to say, many boats of a very

strange shape and rig are observed crowding down to meet the mackerel shoals at the chops of the Channel. As the mighty hosts of those "friends) t the people" come further east, the number of vessels increases, till you may sometimes see eight or nine all together, and as their nets seem to be filled every time they haul, you would naturally expect that mackerel would be plentiful as blackberries-and so, indeed, they are, for blackberries are a rarity here. The monopolizing fish-dealers of Portsmouth and the other large towns on the coast, and, above all, of the omnivorous London, step in between you and your half-dozen mackerel, and neither love nor money can procure you a single scale, unless on the marble slab of the fishmonger. Would you believe it, that although the sea here is teeming with fish, and the purchase of boat, tackle, and a whole mile of net would not exceed £160, there is no regular mackerel boat belonging to this coast employed in the fishing? Why do not a few of the natives join, and procure a vessel and apparatus? The gains are enormous. Last summer one of the Brighton boats was fishing off this shore, and in one night caught fish which was sold to the salesmen in Portsmouth for £180. And this is not uncommon. The ordinary race of fishermen are too poor to undertake the first expense; but nothing would be more easy, nor a more judiciousnot charity, but-encouragement to deserving men, than for a certain number of gentlemen to advance the necessary funds, which one season's exertion would enable the fishermen to repay. Four fishermen and a steersman, which would constitute the crew, would be passing rich with such a possession. In Holland, the government would give all possible encouragement to such a scheme; and in Scotland, I feel sure, the funds would be supplied, the boat, &c., bought, the fish caught, and the debt discharged in the course of three months. But here there is a very migratory population, attracted from all parts of England by the mildness of the winter, and the beauty of the summer; they seldom settle long enough to become acquainted with the amphibious animals who inhabit little huts upon the shore, and supply them with delicious prawns and lobsters; and return to their own dwellings in